peripathetic

Yesterday evening I witnessed the most amazing things. I didn't realise that Bath is quite so much of a hot-air balloon place as it is. We were in the garden, surrounded by wineglasses beaded with condensation, smells of hickory smoke, and rocketing cats, when loads of balloons floated scarily low over the houses, one by one. It was beautiful. Dad told James to find his catapult, and was kicked under the table for his pains. It reminded me of the time last autumn when I saw balloons over the city at dusk, like massive floating lanterns as their gas-jets flared.

Simon Schama, who wrote this and has appeared in many history programmes on TV, was sitting in a tiny two-room pub we lunched at today. My sister Sarah was there. I love her. She gave me a fiver without having to be asked, and told dad to shut up when he went on about me lighting one cigarette when the pub was already hazed with blue.

There is a strangely-dressed man in this city, who stands statue-still in a niche of golden stone near the Abbey. He reaches down and pats the heads of children. People take photographs, and deposit large amounts of money. And yet all this man does is get dressed up and stand around. Usually I'd just have said that, and then shut up and moved on. But there's something which really gets to me, in a quiet way, about a tourist-infested place where there are people who can afford costumes who are given over 100 pounds in one day, and other people who are on the breadline, who have to really try very hard indeed to even get tossed 5p. Entertain us and we will reward you. Confront us with the seamier side of humanity and we will ignore you as much as we possibly can. I'm not going to launch into a homily about it here. But people really do actually die because of such collective frames of mind.

Tourists and money aside, I had another chance encounter today. A double-take on the street became more, and involved a couple of pints in a nice pub in a sunny street with a cute, big-eyed, smiley guy in his early twenties. I didn't even touch him, and no, I didn't even get half an erection at any point in either our meeting, conversation, or goodbye. But secretly I think, and hope, that he will fantasise about me sometime. I guess we all think that about people who look at us on the street. If only we'd stopped and talked, if only we'd have smiled longer, if only if only if only. I've dispensed with those for a certain time, and even though it may only last for the time I've been in Bath, and even though it has involved no sex whatever, I'm happy. It's been... enough.